Search of exoplanetary radio signals in the presence of strong interference: enhancing sensitivity by data accumulation

We develop a statistical approach aimed at the detection of weak sporadic pulses on the noise background. The results are applied to modeling the observational time series where pulsed radio emissions have to be recognized against the sky background fluctuations. The proposed methodology demonstrates the efficiency of using the statistics of peak values (integrated tail of probability distribution function of the intensity) for the purpose of signal detection. It is established that the highest sensitivity is reached with this method at low values of the filling factor (duty cycle) of the pulsed signals. If in addition the pulses have sufficiently high intensity, the discussed approach performs better than simple integration over the observational time. Then we discuss the possibility of detecting radio pulses from exoplanetary magnetospheres, especially from known “hot Jupiters” found by radial velocity measurements in the visible and we report our results from extensive observations of several candidate exoplanets with the world largest decameter telescope UTR-2. Although no detection of pulsed emission from exoplanets has been found to date, the analysis demonstrates the feasibility of detection with more stable receivers and longer observational time.     

SPICES: spectro-polarimetric imaging and characterization of exoplanetary systems

SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks in the visible (450?C900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40 using both spectroscopy and polarimetry. By 2020/2022, present and near-term instruments will have found several tens of planets that SPICES will be able to observe and study in detail. Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, SPICES can preferentially access exoplanets located at several AUs (0.5?C10?AU) from nearby stars (<25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses to Super Earths (??2 Earth radii, ??10 M_??) as well as circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System.     

Seismic study of solar convection and overshooting: results of nonlocal convection

Local mixing-length theory is incapable of describing nonlocal phenomena in stellar convection, such as overshooting. Therefore standard solar models constructed with local mixing-length theory significantly deviate from the Sun at the boundaries of the convection zone, where convection becomes less efficient and nonlocal effects are important. The differences between observed and computed frequencies mainly come from the region near the surface, while the localized difference in sound speed is just below the convective envelope. We compute a solar envelope model using Xiong’s nonlocal convection theory, and carry out helioseismic analysis. The nonlocal model has a smooth transition at the base of the convection zone, as revealed by helioseismology. It reproduces solar frequencies more accurately, and reduces the localized difference in sound speed between the Sun and standard solar models.     

Applications of wavelets to the analysis of cosmic microwave background maps

We consider wavelets as a tool to perform a variety of tasks in the context of analysing cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. Using spherical Haar wavelets, we define a position and angular-scale-dependent measure of power that can be used to assess the existence of spatial structure. We apply planar Daubechies wavelets for the identification and removal of point sources from small sections of sky maps. Our technique can successfully identify virtually all point sources that are above 3 and more than 80 per cent of those above 1 . We discuss the trade-offs between the levels of correct and false detections. We denoise and compress a 100 000-pixel CMB map by a factor of 10 in 5 s, achieving a noise reduction of about 35 per cent. In contrast to Wiener filtering, the compression process is model-independent and very fast. We discuss the usefulness of wavelets for power spectrum and cosmological-parameter estimation. We conclude that at present wavelet functions are most suitable for identifying localized sources.     

Turbulence properties in the solar convection envelope： properties of the overshooting regions

We apply the turbulent convection model (TCM) to investigate properties of tur-bulence in the solar convective envelope, especially in overshooting regions. The results show TCM gives negative turbulent heat flux uγ′T′in overshooting regions, which is sim-ilar to other nonlocal turbulent convection theories. The turbulent temperature fluctuation T′T′shows peaks in overshooting regions. Most important, we find that the downward overshooting region below the base of the solar convection zone is a thin cellular layer filled with roll-shaped convective cells. The overshooting length for the temperature gradi-ent is much shorter than that for element mixing because turbulent heat flux of downward and upward moving convective cells counteract each other in this cellular overshooting region. Comparing the models' sound speed with observations, we find that raking the convective overshooting into account helps to improve the sound speed profile of our nonlocal solar models. Comparing the p-mode oscillation frequencies with observations,we validated that increasing the diffusion parameters and decreasing the dissipation pa-rameters of TCM make the p-mode oscillation frequencies of the solar model be in betteragreement with observations.     

The evolution of BD+60°2522: with mass loss and overshooting

The ionizing star BD+60°2522 is known as the central star of Bubble Nebulae NGC 7635—wind-blown bubble created by the interaction of the stellar wind of BD+60°2522 (O6.5 IIIef, V=8.7 mag, mass loss rate 10^−5.76 M _⊙/year) with the ambient interstellar medium. From the evolutionary calculations for the star with mass loss and overshooting, we find that the initial mass of the star is 60M _⊙, its present age is 2.5×10⁶ years, and the present mass is 45M _⊙.     

N-body simulations of non-gaussian distributions: Topological analysis and evolution

WithN-body simulations, we study the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe, assuming non-Gaussian initial conditions. We also discuss the sensitivity of different statistical tests to the change of the initial conditions.Paper presented at the 11th European Regional Astronomical Meetings of the IAU on New Windows to the Universe, held 3–8 July, 1989, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.     

Chemical mixing by turbulent convection in the overshooting region below the convective envelope of RGB stars

Based on the turbulent convection model(TCM),we investigate chemical mixing in the bottom overshooting region of the convective envelope of intermediatemass stars,focusing on its influence on the formation and extension of blue loops in the Hertzsprung-Russell(HR) diagram.A diffusive mixing model is adopted during the Red Giant Branch(RGB) phase.The properties of the blue loop are changed by modification of the element profiles above the H-burning shell,which results from the incomplete mixing in the bottom...     

On the DB gap of white dwarf evolution:effects of hydrogen mass fraction and convective overshooting

We investigate the spectral evolution of white dwarfs by considering the effects of hydrogen mass in the atmosphere and convective overshooting above the convection zone.Our numerical results show that white dwarfs with MH～10-16M⊙ show the DA spectral type between 46000■Teff■26000K and the DO or DB spectral type may appear on either side of this temperature range.White dwarfs with10-15M⊙ appear as DA stars until they cool to Teff～31000K;from then on they will evolve into DB white dwarfs as a result of conve...     

Fourier-component phase accumulation in observation of an object through a turbulent atmosphere: I

We discuss the problem of obtaining a diffraction-limited image when an object is observed through a medium with random inhomogeneities of refraction index. A new method for post-detector signal accumulation over a significantly long sequence of instantaneous images is examined. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated by the example of images obtained by computer simulation.     

Thermalization by synchrotron absorption in compact sources: electron and photon distributions

The high-energy continuum in Seyfert galaxies and galactic black hole candidates is likely to be produced by a thermal plasma. There are difficulties in understanding what can keep the plasma thermal, especially during fast variations of the emitted flux. Particle–particle collisions are too inefficient in hot and rarefied plasmas, and a faster process is called for. We show that cyclo-synchrotron absorption can be such a process: mildly relativistic electrons thermalize in a few synchrotron cooling times by emitting and absorbing cyclo-synchrotron photons. The resulting equilibrium function is Maxwellian at low energies, with a high-energy tail when Compton cooling is important. Assuming that electrons emit completely self-absorbed synchrotron radiation and at the same time Compton scatter their own cyclo-synchrotron radiation and ambient UV photons, we calculate the time-dependent behaviour of the electron distribution function, and the final radiation spectra. In some cases, the 2–10 keV spectra are found to be dominated by the thermal synchrotron self-Compton process rather than by thermal Comptonization of UV disc radiation.     

NGC 7027: analysis of 7.8–20 micron continuum,silicate and PAH grain distributions

Images of mid-infrared (5 - 20µm) circumstellar dust sources have been obtained with a new 58 × 62 pixel infrared array camera system. A seven-color imaging study of the bright planetary nebula NGC 7027 challenges the assertion that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) may extend further from the center of the nebula than the continuum emission from silicate dust grains. It appears that the overall distributions are nearly identical, ruling out differences in intensity between the PAH emission and the general “silicate” dust material. A rigorous comparison between the infrared image data and new visible CCD images of NGC 7027 is made.     

Infrared absorption by shape distributions of NH3 ice particles: An application to the Jovian atmosphere

We study how distribution of small NH₃ ice particles over shapes affects the strength of resonant absorption features at 9.4 and 26 m. The T-matrix approach is used to compute optical cross sections for shape distributions of 0.5- and 1-m volume-equivalent radius spheroids in random orientation. It is found that the maximum of the resonant absorption for the shape distributions is 1.5–2 times smaller than that for equal-volume spherical particles, the absorption peak being shifted towards longer wavelengths. The results of our computations support the conclusion of West et al. (1989) that, apparently, small NH₃ ice particles cannot be the principal component of the Jovian troposphere in the 300- to 500-mbar region.     

Hydrostatic gas distributions: global estimates of temperature and abundance

Estimating the temperature and metal abundance of the intracluster and the intragroup media is crucial to determine their global metal content and to determine fundamental cosmological parameters. When a spatially resolved temperature or abundance profile cannot be recovered from observations (e.g. for distant objects), or deprojection is difficult (e.g. due to a significant non-spherical shape), only global average temperature and abundance are derived. After introducing a general technique to build hydrostatic gaseous distributions of prescribed density profile in potential wells of any shape, we compute the global mass-weighted and emission-weighted temperature and abundance for a large set of barotropic equilibria and an observationally motivated abundance gradient. We also compute the spectroscopic-like temperature that is recovered from a single temperature fit of observed spectra. The derived emission-weighted abundance and temperatures are higher by 50 to 100 per cent than the corresponding mass-weighted quantities, with overestimates that increase with the gas mean temperature. Spectroscopic temperatures are intermediate between mass and luminosity-weighted temperatures. Dark matter flattening does not lead to significant differences in the values of the average temperatures or abundances with respect to the corresponding spherical case (except for extreme cases).     

On the effect of overshooting as predicted by the modelling of the pre-main-sequence evolution of a 2 M⊙ star

We discuss the effects of convective overshooting in the pre-main-sequence (PMS) evolution of intermediate-mass stars, by analysing in detail the early evolution towards the main sequence of a  2 M_⊙  stellar model. These effects can be extremely important in the end of the PMS, when the abundances in CNO elements approach the equilibrium in the centre. We provide a possible physical explanation on why a moderate amount of overshooting produces, as the star approaches the zero-age main-sequence, an extra loop in the evolutionary tracks on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram.
An interesting feature is that there is a very well defined amount of overshooting (for a given stellar mass and chemical composition) beyond which a loop is produced. For smaller amounts of overshooting such a loop does not take place and the evolutionary tracks are similar to those found in the literature. The amount of overshooting needed to produce the loop decreases with stellar mass.
We discuss the underlining physical reasons for the behaviour predicted by the evolution models and argue that it provides a crucial observational test for convective overshooting in the core of intermediate-mass stars.     

Static charged dust distributions: Sources of purely electromagnetic origin

The present work is a continuation of our earlier work on the charged dust sources of purely electromagnetic origin for static axisymmetric and static spherically-symmetric fields. Here we have extended the above work to the case of generalized static metric and have shown that a static charged dust distribution, irrespective of any symmetry conditions, can be only of purelly electromagnetic origin. Incidentally, it follows from this result itself that the Weyl-Majumdar-Papapetrou class of static charged dust sources, which form an important class of astrophysical systems, are also of purely electromagnetic origin.